Clouds of Bodies Out of Every Pore
Ten things Good-Wealth works out about teachers while walking — including that keeping one's company means agreeing to suffer for others without end. Then he arrives, and finds a teacher who is not so much speaking as issuing weather.
Ten Things He Works Out on the Way
In the previous part the teacher made him understand ten things about drawing near to teachers. Here he arrives at ten of his own, and they are harder than hers.
時，善財童子遽發是念：「由親近善知識，能勇猛勤修一切智道；由親近善知識，能速疾出生諸大願海；由親近善知識，能為一切眾生，盡未來劫受無邊苦；由親近善知識，能被大精進甲，於一微塵中說法聲遍法界；由親近善知識，能速往詣一切方海；由親近善知識，於一毛道，盡未來劫修菩薩行；由親近善知識，於念念中行菩薩行，究竟安住一切智地；由親近善知識，能入三世一切如來自在神力諸莊嚴道；由親近善知識，能常遍入諸法界門；由親近善知識，常緣法界未曾動出，而能遍往十方國土。」
At that time this thought arose in Good-Wealth at once: "By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can valiantly and diligently cultivate the whole path of all-knowing wisdom. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can swiftly bring forth the oceans of great vows. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can, for the sake of every being, undergo boundless suffering to the end of all future eons. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can put on the armor of great diligence, so that in a single mote of dust the sound of one's teaching pervades the dharma-realm. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can swiftly go to every ocean of quarters. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can, in the track of a single hair, cultivate the bodhisattva practices to the end of all future eons. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can, in thought after thought, walk the bodhisattva practices and abide at last in the ground of all-knowing wisdom. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can enter every adorned path of the sovereign spiritual power of every tathāgata of the three times. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one can constantly enter universally into every gate of the dharma-realms. By drawing near to good spiritual friends one constantly takes the dharma-realm as one's object without ever stirring out of it, and yet can go everywhere throughout the lands of the ten directions."
由親近善知識，能為一切眾生，盡未來劫受無邊苦 — by drawing near to good spiritual friends one can, for the sake of every being, undergo boundless suffering to the end of all future eons. This is the third of his ten, and it is the one no list of benefits would ordinarily contain. What the company of a teacher makes possible, on his reckoning, is not relief but the capacity to bear more.
常緣法界未曾動出，而能遍往十方國土 — one constantly takes the dharma-realm as one's object without ever stirring out of it, and yet can go everywhere throughout the lands of the ten directions. His tenth answers the teacher's tenth from the previous part almost word for word — 能不離本處遍至十方, without leaving one's own place, reaching everywhere. He has understood the lesson and restated it in his own vocabulary, which is what the sūtra means by a student having received something.
Found Inside a Buddha's Assembly
Unlike every night-spirit before her, she is not in the sky or on a road. She is sitting in a tathāgata's own assembly, in samādhi, and already at work.
爾時，善財童子發是念已，即詣喜目觀察眾生夜神所。見彼夜神在於如來眾會道場，坐蓮華藏師子之座，入大勢力普喜幢解脫，於其身上一一毛孔，出無量種變化身雲，隨其所應，以妙言音而為說法，普攝無量一切眾生，皆令歡喜而得利益。
At that time, having given rise to this thought, Good-Wealth went to where the night-spirit Joyful Eye Observing Beings was. He saw that night-spirit in the assembly at a tathāgata's place of awakening, seated upon a lotus-treasury lion seat, having entered the liberation of the Banner of Universal Joy of Great Power; and from each single pore upon her body there issued measureless kinds of clouds of transformation-bodies, which, in accordance with what was fitting, taught the dharma with wondrous speech and sound, gathering in measureless beings of every kind and causing them all to rejoice and to gain benefit.
在於如來眾會道場 — in the assembly at a tathāgata's place of awakening. The previous teacher said this one was 去此不遠，於菩提場右邊, a few steps to the right of the awakening site. She turns out to be inside the assembly itself. Good-Wealth has walked, in effect, from the edge of the sūtra's founding scene into it.
出無量種變化身雲 — there issued measureless kinds of clouds of transformation-bodies. 身雲, body-clouds, is the governing image of her whole teaching: not a voice but a weather system, issuing from every pore and each cloud carrying a different pāramitā. What follows in this fascicle is that catalogue, one perfection at a time.
The First Cloud Teaches Giving
Each cloud has a subject. The first takes the perfection of giving, and ends on the same formula the city spirit used four teachers ago.
所謂：出無量化身雲，充滿十方一切世界，說諸菩薩行檀波羅蜜，於一切事皆無戀著，於一切眾生普皆施與；其心平等，無有輕慢，內外悉施，難捨能捨。
That is to say: she sent forth measureless clouds of transformation-bodies which filled every world of the ten directions and taught the bodhisattvas' practice of the dāna-pāramitā — having no fond attachment to anything at all, and giving universally to every being; their minds equal, without any contempt, giving away both inner and outer things, able to give up what is hard to give up.
內外悉施，難捨能捨 — giving away both inner and outer things, able to give up what is hard to give up. 難捨能捨 is exactly the phrase Great God used in Part 1071 when he told Good-Wealth to take the mountains of treasure and hand them all on. 內外, inner and outer, is the standard division between one's possessions and one's own body and life.
The Second Cloud Teaches the Precepts
Longer than the first, and it does not stay with conduct. Half of it is a set of observations about what the world is actually like, offered as the reason for keeping precepts at all.
又出等眾生數無量化身雲，充滿法界，普現一切眾生之前，說持淨戒無有缺犯，修諸苦行皆悉具足，於諸世間無有所依，於諸境界無所愛著，說在生死輪迴往返，說諸人天盛衰苦樂，說諸境界皆是不淨，說一切法皆是無常，說一切行悉苦無味，令諸世間捨離顛倒，住諸佛境持如來戒。如是演說種種戒行，戒香普熏，令諸眾生悉得成熟。
And she sent forth measureless clouds of transformation-bodies equal in number to beings, which filled the dharma-realm and manifested universally before every being, and taught the keeping of the pure precepts without breach or violation, the cultivation of every austerity in full, having no reliance upon any world and no fond attachment to any object. They taught of the turning and returning within birth and death, of the rise and fall and the suffering and pleasure of gods and humans; they taught that every object is impure, that every dharma is impermanent, that every conditioned act is suffering and without savor — causing every world to abandon inversion, to abide in the domain of the buddhas and to keep the tathāgata's precepts. Expounding in this way every kind of precept-practice, so that the fragrance of the precepts perfumed everywhere, she caused beings to be brought to ripeness.
說一切行悉苦無味 — they taught that every conditioned act is suffering and without savor. 無味, without savor or flavor, is an unusually physical word for this claim; it makes the point by taste rather than by argument. Set beside 說諸人天盛衰苦樂, the rise and fall and the suffering and pleasure of gods and humans, the cloud's message is that even the pleasant half has nothing in it.
戒香普熏，令諸眾生悉得成熟 — the fragrance of the precepts perfumed everywhere, and she caused beings to be brought to ripeness. 戒香, the fragrance of moral discipline, is one of the sūtra's oldest images, and 熏, perfuming, is the same verb used in Part 1071 of a root of goodness soaking into someone. The precepts are not described as imposed but as scent carried on air.
Part 1087 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-nine. Part 1088 continues the clouds through patience — bearing cutting, beating, cursing and humiliation with a mind left undisturbed — and then through eleven kinds of valiant diligence, from subduing Māra to purifying every buddha-land.